Why do movies influence so many kids when it comes to martial arts?

Question

It just hit me that the movie "Never Back Down" has a "MMA Club" in it. Now all of a sudden everyone in Yahoo Answers and on the streets are using words like "MMA Club" to describe where they supposedly train at. I find this very funny any one else? A MMA team is a MMA team and even "independent fighters" don't have a "club" they just have gyms or dojo's that they work at. What is up with children allowing hollywood to make them lie so much? Are kids that far gone from "reality"?

Thank You,

William Perrin - Team Bushi MMA Head Instructor http://www.myspace.com/mmatopguru

Answer 1

lol.. it makes them feel strong or something... :P

Answer 2

kids are impressionable. look at how many people still think that if bruce lee went in to the ufc and fought tito. he would jump over a take down and hit his opponent with a two inch punch and then the guy might die. on the other hand this may just be some kids way of identifying with their gym more closely. I mean I roll and spar with guys that I would never hang out with out side of the gym, but down there it is like a really close nit group of friends or family. some may have called it a club before hand and that may have been where the movie got its idea. no I do not think of it as a club, but a 14 year that comes down might, considering it is a pretty small gym, untill the new one opens. and all of us are really tight when we're down there. Also language is ever changing. some kids just may see "club" as the cool way to say gym and people they train with

Answer 3

Kids often lack the maturity and benefit of life's experiences to base things on and so their view is a little skewed.  This is also one of the reasons why they sometimes have a false sense of security or invincibility and get hurt or die in auto accidents or doing something that adults shake their head about and wonder why or how something could happen like it does.   In my class I use the example of Smokey and the Bandit with my students and tell them how many cars they actually used in filming that movie as well as talk to them about driving or behaving like that.  It usually gets them thinking about it and realizing that it is only a movie and not actually reality and that if a person actually drove like that they would be in jail pretty quickly or dead.

Answer 4

its not only that movie but its also c**p like UFC because they see it on TV and then think o that must be the best but they dont do any research or any training themselves they just go by information they saw on tv or heard from other people who heard it from tv and it becomes like chinese whispers.

Answer 5

Guess its there way of fitting in, its kind of sad, considering who these kids really are.

Answer 6

It's not just martial arts. You never wanted to be an astronaut or a cowboy when you were a kid because of a movie?

Movies are very powerful things... They convey images that produce emotional responses. High adventure and excitement couple with emotional dramatic events, and you think this wouldn't have an influence?

We have a strange double-standard in our society: we encourage imagination and creativity in children and scorn it in adults. The Tween and Teen years are a hard time in which the kids are forced to transition out of that "childish" creativity into banal adulthood. It's frankly no wonder that such a creative engine (film) has such a strong influence on that age group.

Edit:

Well, that could be a safe assumption (that he's lying), but I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt. When I was in boarding school, there was a "Karate Club" on campus (the girl was a full fledged instructor at one of the schools in town and was offering free lessons at the school), and it was absolutely a club (and registered as one with the student council and administration). There are college campuses with MMA "clubs" forming, where they train in multipurpose rooms or gym classrooms. So there could be a plausible reason that they're using the term. I'm not saying this is the case with these kids on the forum, only that it's possible.

Answer 7

My Sifu calls our dojo a club sometimes...

Answer 8

yes enter the dragon and kung-fu shows did get me into the arts g-master sandman .